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I divide all my hives at the end of the main flow into story and a half (a deep and a medium), I give one a new laying queen, and leave the other with the old queen. If one or the other is not doing so well, I re-combine in the early spring (or late fall if I can tell by then) with one that is doing well. If both are doing well, I can either add a second deep to both in the early spring and leave them as two hives or nuc one queen and re-combine. So far it has worked out very well (of course the key here is my southerly location that allows them to overwinter well in the story and a half configuration).

Response to Gene's post

Gene:
Thanks for sharing some of your management techniques. I have a few more questions for you though.

1. For those queens not requeened, what is their propensity to swarm next spring.

2. Do you find that those who have been requeened in the late summer early fall have more production the next year.

When I kept bees during the late 70s through mid to late 80s, I had Midnite queens. I would always requeen all of my colonies end of August first of September. By doing this, I felt better queens were available this time of year, no worry concerning availability, and you had a young virilous queen laying to get you through the winters, and a good start next spring. Any queens that showed to be defective, you still had time to requeen before next years honey flow. Also, I figured this reduced swarming as the theory back then was that older queens were more inclined to swarm. Don't recall that I ever had any swarms but Midnites (hybrid Caucasians) were known for their low swarm tendency.

Keith , what kind of dose do you give them and how is it applied? kill queens and not brood.Jean-Marcd

JM, I use 95% for queen killing, 75-85 degrees works well, Also, you will kill some young bees but thats about it. Two loads works best about 12 hours apart, two -three paper towl works well and is cheap.

So if I got it right, you give them 3 paper towels worth of 95% formic. Am I to assume that a paper towel holds 30 ml or a shot glass. That would mean about 90 ml given twice about 12 hours apart if I got it right.

Who sells 95% formic?

Jean-Marc

P.S.- Thanks for the info, very very valuable to me and others I suppose.

Re: Response to Gene's post

Gene:
Thanks for sharing some of your management techniques. I have a few more questions for you though.

1. For those queens not requeened, what is their propensity to swarm next spring.

2. Do you find that those who have been requeened in the late summer early fall have more production the next year.

Danny:

1. For the most part, they don't seem to have much propensity to swarm. I think when I insert the empty deep and move the medium to the top early in the spring (the timing is fairly critical), it seems to put them in establishment mode. As the brood emerges from the top super, they fill it with nectar. As soon as the super is filled, I checkerboard it with either foundationless frames (for comb honey) or frames of empty comb, this seems to keep them busy rebuilding their honey stores during swarm season. Once you have gotten them distracted enough and past the reproductive cutoff, they seem to have lost interest in swarming and go about the business of building up stores. Then, for the most part, I can just keep stacking on empty supers.

2. I have not really noticed much difference between the two, but then since I don't mark my queens, I have no way of knowing if the older queens have been superseded. So far, I have had a very small percentage of dinks, and they seem to come pretty evenly from both categories of hives.

Last year I did not have quite enough mediums to configure all the splits as story and a half. I overwintered several in single deeps. I did have problems with these wanting to swarm. It did not seem to matter if they were the old queen or the new queen. When I added the second deep, they tended to store a lot of honey in the top of it making it difficult to break up the "honey cap" on the brood nest. When I put an empty super on top, they tended to ignore filling it in favor of swarm preparations. I gave up on a honey crop from these hives and used them as cell builders for this years batch of queens. That actually worked out quite well for me.

Re: large scale requeening

Re: large scale requeening

Originally Posted by jean-marc

Keith:

So if I got it right, you give them 3 paper towels worth of 95% formic. Am I to assume that a paper towel holds 30 ml or a shot glass. That would mean about 90 ml given twice about 12 hours apart if I got it right.

Re: large scale requeening

Keith:

Sounds a like a pretty good plan. Saves a lot of time trying to find the old queen. This way you can do volume. Even if you get 80% mating , from 100 you get 160 after splitting first. Keeps your numbers up, varroa down and young queens for the upcoming seaswon.